Tuesday, February 26, 2013

FBI Taught Agents to “Bend or Suspend the Law”

FBI Taught Agents to “Bend or Suspend the Law”

The
Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has taught its agents in the
past that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they are involved in the
wiretapping of suspects. The agency has since said they really didn’t
mean it.
They have since removed the instruction from their counterterrorism
training curriculum, calling it an “imprecise” instruction. One has to
wonder just why it was that they removed the material? Was it because
they were caught teaching such things?

Many national security attorneys have said it is a good thing because
it is a very serious thing to claim that they can twist the law in
order to go after suspects is just wrong. I agree it is.
However, the larger picture is the fact that such statement even made
it into a curriculum in training agents is disturbing. Once you have
trained agents with this material, it becomes rather difficult to remove
from their mindset, especially when those in charge promoted such
criminal activity. Yes it is criminal activity.
The response from the FBI is unsatisfactory as well. For them to
pull the curriculum and claim it is simply an “imprecise” instruction is
far from the truth. The fact is: It was completely wrong and illegal
instruction. Someone should lose their job over such curriculum being
implemented in the first place.
“Dismissing this statement as ‘imprecise’ is a rather unsatisfying
response given the very precise lines Congress and the courts have
repeatedly drawn between what is and is not permissible, even in
counterterrorism cases, over the past decade,” Steve Vladeck, a
national-security law professor at American University, says. “It might
technically be true that the FBI has certain authorities when conducting
counterterrorism investigations that the Constitution otherwise
forbids, but that’s good only so far as it goes.”
When first contacted the FBI was unwilling to release the documents in question. However, the finally did release the document
but failed to provide information as to who prepared the document; how
long it was in circulation; and how many FBI agents, analysts and
officials received its instruction.
Robert Chesney, a national-security expert at the University of
Texas’ law school, said, “This certainly does not read as if a lawyer
wrote it. Congress has given the FBI the authority to wiretap, collect
business records, and gather other forms of information for intelligence
purposes, subject to certain safeguards. It is a severe misstatement to
refer to the exercise of these lawful authorities as ‘bending’ or
‘suspending’ the law; that mischaracterization runs the risk of both
delegitimizing these lawful tools and, simultaneously, conveying to
agents the mistaken impression that there might be some more general
power to disobey the law during intelligence investigations.”
Though there was a six month review of improper counterterrorism
training by the Senate Judiciary Committee, there were absolutely no FBI
officials that received disciplinary action.
And the government wonders why the American people don’t trust them.